1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a crimp terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
A crimp terminal is conventionally known including an electric wire connecting portion to be electrically connected to a core wire of an electric wire and a terminal connecting portion to be electrically connected to a counterpart terminal. In this crimp terminal, a coupling portion coupling the electric wire connecting portion and the terminal connecting portion is interposed therebetween. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2014-182957, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2014-182958, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2014-160591, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2012-69449 disclose this kind of crimp terminals. This kind of crimp terminals is formed through a press process (cutting processing, bending processing, and the like) on a flat plate-shaped member. The plate-shaped member subjected to cutting processing includes a flat electric wire side plate-shaped portion that will be the electric wire connecting portion later by bending processing and the like, a flat terminal side plate-shaped portion that will be the terminal connecting portion later by bending processing and the like, and a flat coupling side plate-shaped portion that will be the coupling portion later by bending processing and the like. The electric wire side plate-shaped portion is formed as a U-shaped electric wire connecting portion including a bottom portion on which an electric wire is placed during crimping processing and two barrel pieces extending from both ends of the bottom portion so as to surround the electric wire by bending processing.
Some terminal connecting portions may be formed to have a box-shaped appearance such as female terminals. In this case, the terminal side plate-shaped portion is formed as the terminal connecting portion by forming two facing walls by bending processing and continuing bending processing and the like on the walls and the like. In this process, the two walls are bent in the respective same directions as the two barrel pieces of the U-shaped electric wire connecting portion. Given this situation, when the bending processing on the two walls and the bending processing on the two barrel pieces are simultaneously performed, bending processing on the coupling side plate-shaped portion can also be performed simultaneously with these pieces of bending processing, and two facing side walls of the coupling portion can be formed by the bending processing. However, when the bending processing of the two walls on the terminal side plate-shaped portion and the bending processing of the two barrel pieces on the electric wire side plate-shaped portion cannot be performed simultaneously, the coupling side plate-shaped portion is bent in such a manner as being dragged by one bending processing performed first of the two, and the coupling side plate-shaped portion is again bent in such a manner as being dragged by the following, other bending processing, whereby the two facing side walls of the coupling portion are formed. In this case, portions of the coupling side plate-shaped portion that will be the side walls later are pulled between the terminal side plate-shaped portion side and the electric wire side plate-shaped portion side during the first bending processing. Consequently, stress concentration occurs at these portions by a tensile force occurring therebetween.